Paying Guests (11 page)

‘Well, now, I wasn’t thinking of that precisely,’ Tilly murmured and then looked at him very directly. ‘Jem, do you remember Sophie Oliver?’

‘Sophie –’ Jem straightened his back and stared at her. ‘Remember Sophie Oliver? I should say I do! When I remember the way her mother behaved, when she lived in your house, and how hard she tried to ruin you – well! How could I ever forget the Olivers? Mother or daughter? Dorcas or Sophie, it’s all one.’

‘Well, it has been some time now,’ Tilly said. ‘Twelve years.’

‘Not so long that I can forget the – the deviousness that Dorcas –’ Jem’s voice rose, and Tilly looked over her shoulder at the other customers, and shook her head warningly.

He subsided and said in a gruff undertone, ‘So long as you forget her too.’

‘I cannot blame Sophie for what her mother was,’ Tilly said. ‘She was but a small child, after all. The thing is, Duff
adored
her. He still has fond memories of her – and said as much to me yesterday. It seemed to me that part of this Patrick – this schoolfellow’s charm was that he reminded Duff of Sophie. Quite powerfully, it appears.’

‘So what are you suggesting?’ Jem was watching her closely, clearly anxious.

‘That we – that he sees her again and so forgets this school friend,’ Tilly said simply. ‘I am sure it would serve very well. If she is half as pretty a young lady as she was a child, she will entrance him. It will be natural that he – you see what I mean, Jem? However tiresome she might be, it is so
proper
for a young man to love a girl. Even a difficult girl would be preferable, I am convinced, to Duff following this present bent! I could not – I –’ She bit her lip to
control the sudden desire to weep which had risen in her. ‘Whatever Sophie is like, she cannot be as wrong for Duff as this Patrick. He is not a good influence. He is older, and – well, I am not comfortable about him.’

‘Will you be any more comfortable with Dorcas about you again?’ Jem said bluntly. ‘She caused you much unhappiness in the past.’

‘I doubt she means me any harm now,’ Tilly said. ‘She could have come to visit any time this past twelve years, for I have not budged. Yet she has not! And anyway, I am older and wiser now. I can deal well enough with Madam Dorcas should she still be interested in tormenting me, which I doubt.’

‘And you think it is worth risking turning over their particular stone in order that Sophie – who might be as devious as her mother, remember, for apples do not fall far from trees! – in order to –’

‘To make life better for Duff? I will do anything and risk anything to make life better for Duff,’ she said. ‘Oh, Jem, say you will help me! Please? I do have need of you!’

‘Hmph,’ he said and glowered a little. And then sighed. ‘Just what is it you want of me, then, Tilly?’

‘Oh, Jem –’ she said and then stopped yet again and he managed to twist his mouth into a sort of smile.

‘You want me to find her, don’t you? Oh dear, oh dear, you want me to find her. And if I do, we must both be quite mad, for you know the trouble that happened when she was last around and –’

‘I know,’ Tilly said. ‘But I am thinking of Duff, you see. And Sophie and Duff, you’ll remember –’

‘Yes,’ Jem said heavily. ‘I remember. So I suppose I’ll have to go and seek her, shan’t I? When could I refuse you anything? But I pray we won’t both live to regret it.’

TILLY SAT IN her kitchen, surrounded by baskets of damsons waiting to be boiled into pots of damson cheese, and pears to be seethed in syrup to preserve them, wondering whether they would need to make extra plum jam to enhance their winter supplies. There were already several dozen pots of redcurrant and raspberry jelly which they had made in July and as many of blackcurrant jam but they might still need to make some greengage jam and quince jellies if they were to avoid the ignominy of having to buy readymade preserves from Charlie Harrod.

She gave herself a little shake then and made a conscious effort to fix her attention. Eliza would look after all that perfectly well, she told herself a little scoldingly; no need to fret over it. All she had to do to help her, as she had promised she would, was to pick over the fruit for blemished parts and to ensure that no unwanted caterpillars and the like lurked in it. A simple enough task, after all.

Perhaps I am thinking of the fruit as a way of not thinking about other matters? she wondered then. Though again, perhaps those matters are not so pressing as I feared. And again she tried to concentrate on the job in hand. But it was no use. All she could think of now was not damsons, but Duff, and her concern for and about him.

She had returned from her visit to Jem’s shop, via the seamstress’s little house where she had left the linen, together with clear instructions on how the sheets were to be made up, and thinking all the way of Jem’s unease about her plan. That he had agreed to do as
she wanted was no surprise; he usually did. But that he should have been so very hostile to Dorcas and her daughter Sophie puzzled her.

It was true that Dorcas had been a very difficult and selfish person all the time that Tilly had known her, ever since her earliest childhood in fact, when Dorcas had been a backstairs resident in the house in Brompton Grove as the daughter of the housekeeper, Mrs Leander, and had teased the small Tilly unmercifully. It was true that Dorcas had tried hard to cheat Tilly in many ways as the years had gone by, their many years together culminating in a painful scene when Tilly had had to banish Dorcas from her house, where she and her child had lived for some time. But was all that enough to make Jem so very unwilling to seek out Sophie for Tilly?

And then Tilly remembered and smiled to herself. Of course, there had been a time when Dorcas had shown a marked interest in Jem on her own account, and he had found that very difficult to deal with. It must be that which had alarmed him. It could not be simply because of his forebodings about Dorcas re-entering her, Tilly’s life, but because she was trying to become reacquainted with Jem himself.

Or so she thought, trying to batten down her own doubts; and she had been much comforted when Duff and Silas Geddes had returned from their morning ride, for Duff had looked so much like his old happy self that she had been almost overcome at the sight of him. They had come into the house through the kitchen, ‘since our boots are so dusty,’ as Duff said and she had looked up, alerted by the clatter of their feet on the area steps, to see him standing in the doorway looking rosy cheeked and a little tousled but clearly feeling so much better that she had felt her eyes smart with tears of pleasure and relief.

‘We had a capital time, Mrs Quentin!’ Silas Geddes said, coming in behind him, grinning at her. He too looked tousled and had a good deal of dust on his riding coat. ‘We cantered along Rotten Row at such a speed that we positively sent up dust clouds! We quite wore out our nags.’

‘It was not difficult to wear out yours!’ Duff said. ‘You chose a
sorry excuse for a goer. I told you I’d selected by far the more mettlesome beast.’

‘Well, well, we won’t argue further on that,’ Silas said good-naturedly. ‘Mine, indeed, was more for show than go, in the event. But I still greatly enjoyed the exercise.’

‘You look as though you did,’ Tilly said, but she was looking at Duff. ‘It must have been agreeable under the trees in Hyde Park.’

‘Very agreeable. And so many fashionable people marching about – it looked like a gossip’s paradise,’ Silas said.

Eliza, who had been in the kitchen at the time and who had, at the sight of Duff, gone immediately to her cool larder to find a jug of her fresh lemonade and was now bustling out with it, pricked up her ears.

‘Who was there?’ she asked. ‘Did you see any of the great people? And were the ladies wearing any of the newer fashions?’

Silas laughed. ‘As to the fashion, I can’t say whether it was new or old, Eliza, since I am sadly ignorant in that area. I can tell you we saw Mr Sheridan Knowles, with a most remarkably handsome creature on his arm.’

‘Mr Sheridan who?’ Tilly said.

‘Knowles. Sheridan Knowles. Writes plays, Mum. Got one at the Lyceum with Mr Bates’s company this very month. Got Henry Irving in it, too! It’s a very lavish piece, Mum.’

‘Dear me! I didn’t know you knew about such matters. Eliza!’ Tilly said. ‘I did not think you went to the theatre.’

‘Oh, no, Mum, I don’t. Too far for me to go traipsin’ up to London and gettin’ home’s such a fag, but that don’t matter – I can still take an interest. Why, I could tell you of all the actresses what’s in the company as well.’

‘Not now, Eliza,’ Tilly said hastily and Silas laughed.

‘You should have been with us, Eliza, for then you could have told us who the pretty lady was, hmm?’ And he looked at Duff, who grinned back.

‘It was you noticed her first!’

‘I could hardly not. I never saw so many frills and fancies on one
back in my life. And I swear she had painted her face – yet it was a very handsome face.’

‘It was a delightful face,’ Duff said. ‘And she had quite the most elegant hat, Mamma, you ever saw. All – well, birds’ feathers and flowers and fruits and heaven knows what else besides.’ His hands fluttered up near his head in a demonstration of a very fussy bonnet. ‘You would have hated it.’

‘Oh dear, am I such a dowd?’ Tilly asked. ‘I would be sad to think so.’

‘No,’ Duff said and came and kissed her cheek. ‘You are just more tasteful than any actress I ever saw. I must go and change, Ma. I feel quite filthy. Thank you for your company, Silas.’

‘Thank you for yours,’ Silas said warmly. ‘I’m most grateful to you for arranging it with Cope. We might do it again.’

‘With pleasure,’ Duff said and clattered away up the stairs to his room, and Tilly watched him go, glowing with gratitude to Duff himself for being so resilient and recovering so quickly, to Mr Geddes for being so kind to the boy – and that warmed her deeply towards him – and with Jem for having been so sensible this morning. Perhaps she shouldn’t let him seek out Sophie after all; perhaps he was right …

Now, alone again, for Silas Geddes had followed Duff upstairs to change and Eliza too had gone off to some upstairs task, she found herself thinking once more about Sophie, and the memory of her came up before her mind’s eye.

A small, beautifully compact child with a great deal of dark red hair spread on her shoulders and eyes which were wide and dark and carefully considering. A little rosebud of a mouth which she kept pursed in such a way that it seemed she knew how delectable it made her look. Long lashes that she liked to sweep down on her cheeks and a skin as pale and rich as new cream. Even at seven she had seemed to know how well she looked and had managed, without obviously posing, to ensure that she was always seen to her best advantage.

Was she still the same? If Jem went ahead and found her, how would she look? Tilly tried to imagine her, but all she could
visualize was a larger version of a seven-year-old child, not an adult at all. Yet an adult she was, just as was Duff. They were almost of an age, with Sophie just seven or eight months the older. And Duff had loved her so much then!

It was inevitable of course that thinking about Sophie would lead to memories of Dorcas. How could it not? There was no doubt that Sophie had inherited her mother’s good looks, together with something more from her father, the soldier Walter Oliver, who had died in skirmishes in China when the army had gone there to put down people they chose to regard as ‘Chinese pagans’ – and as though it were yesterday she could hear the officer at Knightsbridge Barracks who had told her of Walter’s death, explaining to her how he had been part of that force. So long ago, and yet as fresh in her memory as though it had been yesterday.

Dorcas. She tried to concentrate on damsons in an attempt to keep Dorcas at bay but it was no use. There she was, grinning, laughing, looking at her, Tilly, with those calculating stares of hers, veering in a matter of moments from warm and lovely, friendly Dorcas to the most vitriolic and cruel of tormentors. She had used to talk, too, such outrageous stuff, about how unjust the world was to such as she, born into a low family and kept under for ever by the selfishness of those who called themselves her betters, but were nothing of the sort. She had told Tilly over and over again that she cared nothing for any man’s opinion and would live her life as she thought fit. That she saw no reason why a woman should not concern herself with business matters – and indeed, Tilly thought then, don’t I occupy myself in a business? What else is my guest house but a money-making enterprise? ‘And a successful one at that,’ a wicked little voice somewhere deep inside Tilly crowed. ‘A most successful one.’

But Dorcas’s idea of how a lady should live has not been at all like mine, Tilly protested inside her head. How could they be the same? Dorcas was a housemaid, the daughter of a housekeeper who had once been – well, never mind that. Tilly veered away from memories of Mrs Leander, Dorcas’s mother and Sophie’s grandmother, whose history had been a most unsavoury one. Her part in
my life was such that I never wish to consider her again and I won’t, I won’t, she told herself, and made a determined effort to think again about Duff, remembering how much happier he had been when he had returned from his ride with Mr Geddes than he had been at breakfast time, and certainly last night. Had those anguished and alarming outpourings been entirely due to brandy? Had she asked Jem to seek Sophie for no purpose? I must speak to Jem again, she thought anxiously. Perhaps ask him to delay. And then sighed as another thought came bubbling up. Whatever Duff had said last night had to be true. He had found none of those problems he had described at the bottom of a bottle. They had been there all the time and were simply uncorked when the bottle was. There was still need for a mother to be concerned.